SEOUL -- South Korea's LG Electronics has upgraded its membership in AUTOSAR, a development partnership of vehicle manufacturers, suppliers, service providers and companies, for its role in developing software standards for next-generation vehicles.

LG said Monday it has been recognized as a strategic member of AUTOSAR (Automotive Open System Architecture), which implemented five different partnership types -- core, strategic, premium, development and associate. In 2017, LG became a premium partner.

There are nine core companies including BMW, Bosch, Daimler, Ford and Toyota that founded the partnership to consolidate the expertise of partner companies and define an automotive open system architecture standard to support the needs of future in-car applications.

LG has strengthened its business in robotics and autonomous driving. In November 2017, the company released a vehicle to everything (V2X) module based on a 4G communication network.